Russian Business Forum

According to the agency, the volume of the market reached 6.6 billion rubles (exclusive VAT), 5 per cent up compared with the same period of the previous year. This figure includes only costs for placement of search and display ads.

Total expenses for ATL advertising came to 2.5 billion rubles. "In the second quarter of 2009, Internet advertisers became more active in this sphere and neutralized the negative dynamics shown in the first three months ...

Russia's value-added tax may be gradually replaced by the sales tax in 2010-2011, a presidential adviser said.
The head of the expert department with the Kremlin administration, said the move was related to the refund of the value-added tax on export operations, which involved a complicated procedure in comparison with the sales tax.
"We are becoming increasingly convinced that we need to withdraw from this tax gradually in 2009-2011," Dvorkovich said.
Dvorkovich also ...

Target Russian Clients! Sell and rent your property to Russian investors. Find Russian partners.
Properties and worldwide agencies listed on the portal http://www.RealEstateCo.co.uk have a Russian version presented in the Russian portal http://www.Immobilis.Ru , members of http://www.ImmobilisCo.org International Multi-language Real Estate Portal Network.
International Real Estate Agent (agency) or Private Individual, you are willing to target Russian ...

A Russian businessman has purchased a 19th-century chateau once owned by Yves Saint Laurent and his partner for 9.6 million euros, the Oest-France Internet news agency reported on Thursday.
The estate was sold last September to a real estate company from Moscow.
The renowned clothes designer Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge acquired Chateau Gabriel, which had been abandoned since World War II, in 1978. The building in the village of Benerville-sur-Mer in Normandy, which ...

Russian vodka output declined 2% year-on-year to 37.3 million decaliters in the first four months of 2008, the country's National Alcohol Association said on Monday.
Ethanol production fell 27.6% year-on-year to 13.9 million decaliters in January-April 2008.
According to official statistics, wine output went up 10.5% year-on-year to 15.6 million decaliters in the first four months of 2008.
Russia produced 5.2 million decaliters of champagne and sparkling wines in the reporting period, up 16% against ...

Sales of alcohol fell by 15% in Russia in the first nine months of 2009 compared to the same period last year.
Sales of spirits fell by 15-16%, while sales of other alcoholic drinks fell by 14.5%, Vadim Drobiz from the federal centre for the study of the alcohol market told journalists.
A report released earlier this year said the average Russian drinks 17 liters of spirits a year, with some 2 billion liters of ...

The speaker of the lower house of Russia's parliament, the State Duma, said on Monday a customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan would boost economic growth in the three countries and could raise their GDP by 14-15% by 2015.
The presidents of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan signed a package of deals on November 27 to create a customs union with common tariffs, paving the way for a single economic space.
In line with the ...

The basic search engines of the world Internet - Google, Yahoo!, MSN - are seriously eyeing the Russian Internet segment for the game is worth the candle. The Russian web market is interesting for the West from the commercial point of view, general director of the biggest Russian search portal Yandex Arkadi Volozh told the press conference. Growth is noted in every segment of the Russian Internet. The volume of Internet adverts in 2007 increased ...

Spam is flooding the Russian web. It made 35 per cent of entire e-mail, to increase to a half last year, and is expected to bloat to 80 to 85 per cent this year, warn experts.
The Russian anti-spam software market is only emerging. Still, it has scored certain victories. Russian-designed programs better cope with Russian-language spam than their imported analogues.
It takes automata to keep lightning spam attacks at bay-the human brain is powerless ...

The Russian web search company Yandex is to open a subsidiary -Yandex Laboratories - in the U.S.'s Silicon Valley, the company said in a press release on Friday.
It said Yandex Laboratories would be headed by Vish Makhijani, a former Yahoo executive.
Yandex, Russia's most popular Internet search resource, has reportedly been valued at $5 billion for an initial public offering at the U.S. Nasdaq trading floor in the fall. Yandex intends to float $1.5-2 ...